


restart

by laireshi



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616, Superior Iron Man - Fandom
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Superior Iron Man, also, hickmanvengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2663585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is a villain, and Steve, old and frail, doesn't have the strength to stop him anymore. Somehow, they fix each other anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	restart

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for beta to [magicasen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/magicasen/pseuds/magicasen) :)

Steve opened his door. All the lights were on, even though he remembered turning them off. He wasn't really surprised. He waited in the doorstep for a moment and listened, but he couldn't hear anything. And would he, really, even if there was someone inside? His hearing wasn't that good anymore.

He went to where his TV was, almost unused. His apartment seemed empty, but Steve knew what to expect anyway.

_Steve, dear, you do realise all your home security is digital, right?_

The voice came from the speakers, clear as if Tony were standing right next to Steve. He wanted to break the TV with his cane, but it wouldn't stop the sound. There was his radio, or a tablet; so many devices someone could hack into. Steve took a deep breath. He took out his phone and called Carol. “Again,” he said.

“That's the third time,” she answered. “So . . .”

“It's a chance,” Steve said.

“I'll call her,” Carol said and hung up.

***

“Are you sure that's it?” Steve asked.

Maya looked at him irritably. “Extremis is _my_ invention, Captain,” she said. “Of course he thinks no one will hack it, but I know it better than he does. And I don't have to disable the enhancile, just use it to execute the code.”

Steve nodded.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Carol asked from his left.

Even leaning on his cane because he was too tired to stand on his own, he knew there was only one answer. He nodded.

***

His apartment was dark. He pressed the light switch and nothing happened.

“Steve, Steve, Steve,” he heard, in a voice so familiar and yet so wrong.

“Stark,” he said.

“I told you to up your security, didn't I?” Tony asked. His eyes shone eerily blue in the darkness. So he was here this time, just like Steve hoped.

“What do you want?”

“It'ssad really, watching you running around in the circles the Illuminati set for you,” Tony said. “They don't even need me for it. Like I said, sad.”

Steve gripped his cane tighter. “Do you want to gloat?”

“Oh, no,” Tony said. “Offer you a hand, maybe?”

He moved, too quickly, Steve didn't really notice it until Tony stood so close they almost touched. “Really sad,” Tony said, and Steve didn't remember anything else.

***

He woke up in a soft bed the likes of which he'd gotten used to in the mansion. He opened his eyes and looked around before moving.

Something was wrong.

He could see too well. 

When the realisation hit, he sat up, and looked at his hands.

Young. Unscarred. Strong.

He got up and he didn't need a cane, he was sure he could just go through his acrobatics routine now, and –

_How_ , he thought, and the answer was so obvious.

Extremis.

What other surprises were hidden in his body now?

He couldn't feel any electronic devices in his head, so at least that Tony kept to himself, but –

Steve was afraid of his body all the same. But he needed answers.

He looked around the room he was in. It was just like his bedroom in the Tower had on the day he'd moved in, years ago. The walls were a soft yellow colour, like the sun. The first room Tony had offered him had been painted blue, and it'd been too much like ice – Tony had noticed in seconds flat and steered Steve to another bedroom before he could've said a word.

There were two doors, and Steve was sure one led to the bathroom and the other to the corridor. A big wardrobe stood next to the wall perpendicular to the windows, and there was a drawing desk and a comfortable chair on the wall facing them.

Steve wondered why Tony had done it all, but he wouldn't get answers by staying there.

Would Tony know that he was awake? Could he get a reading on Steve's vitals now?

Steve shook his head. He couldn't think like that. And –

He didn't need his cane, except he _did_. He looked wildly around the room, and breathed with relief. It was there, next to the chair. Good. He made it look like he wasn't really interested in the cane as he approached it and moved the chair so that the cane fell. He lifted it up, and set it back.

Then he looked down at himself. He had on soft blue trousers and a t-shirt with a star on his chest – _funny, no –_ and there was a pair of shoes next to the bed. He put them on and tried the door. It opened easily, and Steve found himself in a silver corridor. He turned left, to where the Tower's living room would be.

The similarities ended when Steve entered the room. There weren't any pictures on the walls. A big sofa faced the ceiling high windows. There was a bar on the other side of the room, and this is where Tony stood, a drink in his hand.

The room was awfully empty, and Tony didn't look like someone pleased with himself. He looked lonely. Then he looked up at Steve, and the illusion disappeared. There was nothing of the Tony Steve had once known in his eyes. Not in the way he took a sip from his glass and not in the way he strolled towards Steve, leisurely.

“What have you done?” Steve forced himself to sound calm.

Tony smirked. “Isn't that obvious? Did I make you stupid by accident? That would be a tragedy.”

“ _Stark_ ,” Steve growled.

“What you can see,” Tony said. “Nothing more. Nothing technological. Nothing that lets me control you. What else can you worry about? Nothing that will wear out,” he continued. “Nothing you have to pay for.”

Steve believed him.

He shouldn't. He knew he shouldn't. This wasn't Tony, and even if he were – he shouldn't trust the real Tony either.

But Steve did, at least with this.

“You had no right,” he said.

“But you won't ask me to change you back,” Tony noticed, and damn that man.

The right thing to do would be to ask him to do just that. Steve knew what Extremis could do. He knew what it had done to other people. To Tony, years ago, when he'd first injected himself with it.

But Steve couldn't. He'd felt like a stranger in his old body, without any purpose, like an old man yelling at the sky, no matter how much he'd tried to pretend.

Now . . . Now he could make a difference again.

“Why?”

Tony laughed. “Because I could,” he said. “Because it was embarrassing to watch you like that.”

Steve was angry, yet the one thing he wanted to do was to go to the gym and test his body.

But that wasn't what he should do. Not yet, and not before someone Steve had reasons to trust ran tests on him.

He had to get closer to Tony, but how?

“And no offence,” Tony said, “but you do look prettier now.”

He stepped close to Steve, and before Steve could react, Tony was kissing him. Steve's hand went up to Tony's arm, to push him away or keep him close, he wasn't sure, and –

It was wrong, but it was Tony, and he tasted like good wine – 

Steve knew what he had to do.

He lifted his left hand, the chip secure between two of his fingers, and pressed it into Tony's neck before he could react.

Tony pushed him away seconds later, stronger than Steve had remembered him being, but then he stumbled.

“What did you –”

“Returned the favour,” Steve said. He watched him carefully. Even if it worked, if the real Tony would be back –

He wasn't Steve's friend. Not anymore.

Tony grasped at his neck, but it was too late. Maya's code was doing its magic.

Tony fell down.

Steve waited for a few long seconds before carefully checking if he was all right – he wouldn't put it past Tony to pretend, now – but he was breathing and apparently unconscious.

Steve exhaled.

***

Tony looked _terrible_.

He was unshaven and pale, his eyes bloodshot. His left hand was cuffed to the bed frame. There was an Extremis dampening bracelet on his right wrist.

The heart monitor beeped in the background steadily, but Steve had already learnt Tony was all right. It was a matter of moving him from the hospital to an actual cell.

When did they come to that?

“I'm sorry,” Tony whispered. “I had no right to do that to you.”

“You didn't lie,” Steve said. He gestured at his body. “I'm perfectly fine.” And grateful, he didn't say. 

He had been going crazy in that old, useless body. Now he could run missions again. He could hope to stop the Cabal. To find the rest of the Illuminati.

“The other people,” Tony said quietly. “I . . .”

Steve didn't want to hear excuses, even as he knew Tony would never offer them. “You lied to me for months,” he said. “You planned genocide.”

Tony flinched.

Seeing Tony as far gone as he'd been after the fight with Red Skull – it was a sharp contrast to the Tony who'd been lying to him for months. Steve had thought he was a monster even then, but –

Was he really excusing him because he faced a bigger monster? A Tony who didn't care for the incursions, who used experimental tech on people, who . . .

Steve shook his head. “There's a cell waiting for you,” he said. “Unless you want to help us catch down the rest of your Illuminati friends.”

“They're trying to save all of you,” Tony said without any hesitation.

There was another question Steve wanted to ask and never would. He wasn't remembering the feel of Tony's lips on his, he wasn't, because clearly Tony, whatever else he might be thinking at the moment, would always use Steve.

And he couldn't survive that any more.

“That's your final decision,” he said. Tony just looked at him.

Steve left.


End file.
